The present invention relates to a method of packing cigarettes in hard flip-top packs.
The machines usually employed for packing cigarettes in hard flip-top packs can be classified into continuous or intermittent feed types, depending on how the cigarettes and pack components are fed along the packing line. Despite providing for relatively high output speeds, the continuous feed type has encountered little enthusiasm on the part of manufacturers, due to the complex mechanical design and consequently higher production and maintenance costs involved, and the fact that high output speed is generally achieved at the expense of quality, especially as regards the folding of lightweight wrapping materials, such as foil, which do not lend themselves readily to continuous shaping and folding.
For all these reasons, the most commonly used cigarette packing machines are intermittent feed types, which, despite providing for a high degree of quality and reliability, present a number of structural drawbacks preventing practically any improvement in current output speed.
Said drawbacks mainly involve what is known as the "packing wheel", i.e. an intermittent feed roller or wheel supplied successively with hard pack blanks and preformed groups of cigarettes usually wrapped in foil; and the conveyor lines for feeding the blanks on to the packing wheel.
In fact, over a given maximum output speed, the acceleration and deceleration involved at each step results, on the one hand, in crushing of the preformed groups of cigarettes and the packs being formed on the packing wheel, and, on the other, in misalignment of the blanks on the conveyor feeding the same.